cracking_the_phone_addictionfandomcom-20200213-history
User blog:VViooola/Why Cell Phones can be Addictive to Adolescents? Zoe Zhang
Zoe Zhang International Relations 12 Mr. Smart June 19th Words: 1996 Why are cell phones addictive to adolescents? In the 21st century, science and technology have changed every aspect of human life. Smart phones, one of the most representative technological inventions since 1999, certainly enhance and deepen this change. Two decades ago, cell phones were used primarily for making and receiving calls and for SMS messaging. But now, cell phone is typically referred to a mobile phone that performs many of the functions of a computer. Normally, it has a touch screen, internet access, and an operating system capable of running downloaded applications. In recent years, the words “smart phone”, “mobile phone”, and “cell phone” are usually used interchangeably. From daily communication to computing, from shopping to entertainment, cell phones are increasingly handling all of the essential needs of humans and even provide more joy and pleasure at the same time. Easy accessibility to information, social connectivity, workplace applications, convenience, mobility, size, and other benefits are the reasons that cell phones are becoming a major part of human life, however, it doesn’t mean that cell phones do not have any adverse effects. Rather, psychologists and behavioral studies scholars have found their negative impacts on human due to the overuse of cell phone and it have raised great concern among the public. Among all of the cell phone users, it is not surprising that adolescents are the most vulnerable ones since they are in a transition period of mental and psychological development with vulnerability to the changes happening in their surroundings(Kumar, 2014). According to Rogers’s study in 2006 Willoughby’s study in 2008, cell phone is one of the advanced devices that almost every adolescents spend the most time with. Although the rapid innovation and development of cell phones do bring benefits and pleasure to their daily life, cell phone addiction has been publicized extensively as an emerging social problem towards adolescents because they are more vulnerable in front of peer pressure and interventional campaigns of cell phones. First of all, adolescents become addicted to cell phone because of social influence that is mainly brought from social media. In order to better understand the whole process of how this addiction forms among adolescents, it is necessary to first look at what social media has that engages teens into using cell phone. Over the past decade, new advancement in media technology has made cell phone an increasingly necessary personal belonging to have in daily routine of adolescents. The most distinguishable feature of modern social media is that they diminish the cost of social activities as much as possible, which is much lower than the method of traditional socialization. Through applications such as Wechat, Facebook, Microblog and Instagram, one is able to take a look at anyone’s daily life at anytime and anywhere, at the meantime, texting, leaving comments and thumbs up are also just as easy as taking a breath. Social network has shortened the distance between people and keep all of the information up-to-date and accessible. In a word, the goal of these social software is to utterly eliminate the influence of time and space towards people’s social life. For adolescents, who are at their prime to seek and experience new things, cell phone becomes a perfect medium. Adolescent’s cell-phones ownership has rapidly increased. It was estimated that 16 million adolescents own cell-phones (multimedia intelligence, 2008) and more than 75% of adolescents have their own cell phones and one third of them text more than 100 messages per day according to the 2013’s study of Akanksha Srivastava and Dr. Ram Kalap Tiwari. Initially, it is reasonable that teenagers want to know others’ life and to keep the track of what is happening in the world out of natural human’s curiosity. In the past, it is almost impossible for one who wants to achieve that simply through writing letters, reading newspapers and watching television, since time and space are two inevitable obstacles. In contrast, kids who born after 2000s, they can connect themselves with the world just by swiping the little screen with two fingers. A report from Pew Research Center in 2010 has released the result that among Teens who have multi-purpose phones, 83% use their phones to take pictures, 64% share pictures with others, 32% exchange videos on their phones, 31% exchange instant messages on their phones and 23% access social network sites on their phones. (Note: activities such as taking and sharing pictures are all involved in using social software, like instagram etc.) On one hand, adolescents are more likely to accept the new method of social interaction provided by all kinds of social medias on cell phones; on the other hand, the low cost of socialization plus the “human’s primitive desire” also stimulate them to constantly follow those software and adopt any latest changes. Rather than using the word “desire”, social influence is a better scientific term originated from sociology to help explain why adolescents would like to give constant attention to their cell phones. Social influence is related to the way of other people affect one’s beliefs, feelings and behavior (Mason et al., 2007). It is likely that the individual will adopt the particular thought, attitude, feeling and behavior as well when the big environment is thinking or doing so. (Mei et al., 2012). According to Smura et al. (2009), in most developed countries, mobile phone have become an inseparable part of everyday life and a majority of people carry them all the time and more and more people choose cell-phone texting as the way of basic communication between them and their friends. Based on this, some 75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones, up from 45% in 2004 and just like adults, those phones have become indispensable tools in their social life as well: fully 72% of all teens, or 88% of teen cell phone users, are text-messengers, which is a sharp rise from the 51% of teens who were texters in 2006. Other than that, more than half of teens (54%) are daily texters. (Lanhart et al., 2010) The intention to use cell phones and those social application is based on the users’ attitude towards the phones and applications as well as the trend of the society and the effect of other people’s expectations (Jamil and Wong, 2010). Friends and family members are seen as social influences perceived to be important to adolescetns in promoting and encouraging greater dependence on cell phones (Auter, 2007). For example, 98% of parents of cell-owning teens say a major reason their child has the phone is that they can be in touch no matter where the teen is; 94% of cell users ages 12-17 agree that cell phones give them more freedom because they can reach their parents no matter where they are; 84% of 12-17 year-old cell owners agree that they like the fact that their phone makes it easy to change plans quickly, compared with 75% of their parents who agree with that sentiment; 48% of cell-owning teens get irritated when a call or a text message interrupts what they are doing, compared with 38% of the cell-owning parents. (Lanhart et al., 2010) Therefore, it is the social influence that appeals adolescent to use cell phones. In addition, another factor contributes to cell phone addiction for adolescents is the interventional campaigns related to cell phones. Mentioning about campaigns and advertisements, mobile marketing service is an unavoidable commercial term to know. Mobile marketing service is a service that is applied by companies (this involves cell phone companies like Apple and software/applications companies) to reach out to their clients directly on their mobile phones for purposes including increasing sales and creating brand recognition in public. (“Mobile Marketing Service”) The main advantages of mobile marketing service is that not only these companies can have personalized communication with their consumers(…), but also promoting their products(cell phones and software) by emphasizing the experience of using them on the phones that consumers are using to watch their campaigns. To be specific, Apple does an excellent job on creating personalized user experience that they take great care of their design from their customers browsing the advertisements of iPhones online to unwrapping the package of the real products. By emphasizing the simplicity and originality of their products, they make their advertisements impressive and effective; and by spending as much time on localizing their promotion method as they do on the products themselves, such as the domestic translation of slogans and the release of commercials of special version for Chinese New Year. (Hangen, 2010) Similarly, application software such as Taobao, even put more efforts on this personalization and try-on experience. For instance, while the users browse products on Taobao, the system later will recommend similar or related products based on the browsing history of them and the setting of feedbacks after each product provide chances for customers to evaluate the products after using them and give reference to future potential customers. In this way, the company can engage customers on a one-on-one basis service thus making the customers feel that they are worthy and special because of the individual treatment (“Mobile Marketing Service”), and meanwhile the advancement of the product that they are promoting is more prominent to see as well. And adolescents, with immature ability of distinguishing right from wrong and rational evaluation of these commercials, easily trust these personalization methods and fully accept them. Since the flexibility of mobile marketing service lets it have a wide reach for different groups of people who may be interested with the products offered by companies, to this extent, adolescents are forced to be affected. “Advertisers utilize focus groups to see which ideas are viewed as ‘cool’,” psychology and social studies teacher Carolyn Braley said. Teens are often the target of advertising because of their growing hunger for the newest “luxury” items that they strive to have the newest electronics, especially cell phones. (“Advertising targets, affects teens”) On average, young people are exposed to 3,000 advertisements per day and advertisers target children at an earlier age in hopes of developing a preference for their product as soon as possible. Teenagers, on average, spend $155 billion per year on advertised products, also influencing their parents to spend another $200 billion per year. (…) Further, the service allows transmission of information to be time sensitive(“Mobile Marketing Service”), which means the companies can reach their clients at anytime, such as the time just after they wake up, or before sleep. In the survey towards Maple Leaf students, for the statements “The first thing you do after you wake up is looking for your cell phone,” and “The last thing you do before sleep is using your cell phone,” most respondents state their frequency as “always” and “often” with 51% and 47% respectively. (Sun et al. 2017) Other than that, pieces of time like the short break between classes, when they go to their class and waiting time for their lunch are also great chances for those commercials to sneak into adolescents’ sights. This kind of interventional campaigns of cell phones and cell phone-related products force teenagers to keep finding new information by taking advantages of their vanity to possess the trending items (cell phones and apps) and show off. Thus, marketing method also plays a significant role in adolescents’ issue of cell phone addiction. All in all, cell phones are addictive to adolescents since the social influence related to social media and the interventional marketing method used by cell phone and application companies. It is unmistakable that cell phone does bring convenience and brand new opportunities and ways of entertainment to people’s daily life but behind all of them, it is also important to identify the dark sides it has, especially for adolescents, who are at the age of vulnerability facing temptations. If one takes a step back and then looks at this issue once again, clearly both the society and cell phone companies are major factors causing adolescents to be addicted, however, adolescents themselves cannot escape from being blamed. But it is no use to simply condemn any of them, understanding that everything has two sides and moving forward to make a difference is more essential. From the very beginning, technology was originated as a tool of humans to understand the world. If the public keep the eyes open and bear in mind the urgent need to educate the vulnerable ones about this relationship between cell phones, technology and human, there is a rosy future ahead for everyone. Works Cited Dolan, Megan.“Advertising targets, affects teens” The Spectator, West High’s Newspaper.''Wordpress. Mar. 9, 2017. Web. June 19, 2017. “Facts about Mobile Marketing Service” ''Mobile Phone Advertising. MobilePhoneMarketing.biz 2012-2013. Web. Jun 10, 2017. Hangen, Nathan. “7 Key Strategies That You Must Learn From Apple’s Marketing”. Kissmetrics Blogs. Kissmetrics, San Franscico. Nov 20, 2010. Web. June 18, 2017. Kumar, K.A.Sudhen Sumesh. “Mobile phone and adolescents- addiction a mindful check in!” International Journal of Advanced Nursing Studies, 3 (1) 42-46., 2014. Lenhart, Amanda et al. “Teens and Mobile Phones” Pew Research Center. Apr 20, 2010. Web. Jun 12, 2017. Norazah Mohd Suki, "Students’ dependence on smart phones: The influence of social needs, social influences and convenience", Vol. 30 Issue: 2, pp.124-134., Labuan. Emerald Insight, 2013. Srivastava, Akanksha and Dr. Ram Kalap Tiwari. “Effect of Excess Use of Cell Phone on Adolescent’s Mental Health and Quality of Life”. K. S. Saket P. G. College Ayodhya, Faizabad (UP), International Multidisciplinary e-Journal, Vol-II, Issue-I, pp. 3-9. Jan 15, 2013. Sun Viola, et al. “Survey Report of Cell Phone Usage Among Maple Leaf student.” Dalian Maple Leaf International School, International Relations 12. Jun 13, 2017. Category:Blog posts Category:Researches